A User Datagram Protocol (UDP) traceroute packet is currently used to identify problems in Internet Protocol (IP) networks. The traceroute packet is sent into the IP network with a small TTL value. The small TTL value is decremented by each intermediate router that forwards the traceroute packet through the IP network. The intermediate router that decrements the TTL value to zero refuses to forward the traceroute packet and replies back to the traceroute packet source with an Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) ‘TTL exceeded’ message.
Traceroute packets are not effective in measuring network delay. For example, the ‘TTL exceeded’ message does not indicate when the intermediate node received the traceroute packet. Further, the ‘TTL exceeded’ message may travel back to the source through a different path than the path used for originally sending the traceroute packet. Therefore, the round trip delay from when the traceroute packet was originally sent to when the ‘TTL exceeded’ message is received back at the source does not identify the one-way packet delay for the traceroute packet.
The present invention addresses this and other problems associated with the prior art.